Dear Colleagues, Happy Friday!

This week we’ve seen Queenslander’s efforts really start to take effect on the rate of new cases – here in Metro North, across QLD and the country. This keeps us in the containment phase of our preparation and leaves us in a strong position to respond to more activity if or when required.

Our collective commitment to regular hand washing, social distancing and staying home have got us here and should only encourage us to keep going! A few updates for you today:

• Elective surgery update
• Clarification around numbers
• Acts of kindness

Elective surgery update

In Shaun’s message today, he announced we are discussing options to reopen some theatres for limited urgent category two surgeries and urgent category five gastroenterology procedures. Over the coming weeks, we will be carefully assessing our current capacity and preparedness for COVID-19 against the needs of our patients who are waiting for these urgent services. As always, we’ll keep you informed with any updates.

Clarification around numbers

I’ve had many of you ask me why the numbers in our daily messages are sometimes different from those reported in the public arena and at the national level. As someone who likes to see things add up, I understand your frustration. The main reason for this is that the numbers reported reflect a ‘point in time’ and there are sometimes discrepancies, due to differences in timing of recording, or admission and transfer between different reporting areas. Occasionally there are duplications that require remediation.

The number of reported ‘recovered’ patients are quite different between jurisdictions as well. That’s again sometimes due to differences in timing of ‘discharge’ but mainly because of how different agencies record a ‘recovered’ patient. For example, Metro North report at 10:00 daily our ‘recovered’ rate to Queensland Health in accordance with the National Guidelines when our patients have met the requirements for ‘release from isolation’. This marks the point when patients under our care can be discharged from our clinical care back to the ‘normal’ restrictions that apply to all Queenslanders. These are the numbers you see below in our messages every day.

The Public Health Network, however, report ‘recovered’ a little differently. These reported numbers lag our reported numbers as they reflect when Public Health teams have ‘closed’ their cases entirely – i.e. completed their actions against the National Guidelines which specifically includes follow up 7 days post-release from isolation.

Acts of kindness

If there is a silver lining from this situation, it’s the way we’ve stepped up to support each other as HHS and as a community. We’ve been inundated with requests to support our staff in many ways and received many packages of kind letters from schools, community groups and families. See one lovely example below (and I understand our facilities have received many like this):

Let this remind you how appreciated you are in the community. I hope you are able to be inspired and encouraged by these kind gestures. Please remember to look out for yourself and your colleagues – refer to or share the resources from our Staff Wellbeing Page freely.

Thank you to all those who are working over the weekend and for those of you at home, enjoy, rest and recover.

Regards,
Dr Liz Rushbrook
Metro North Health Incident Controller

Metro North HHS – Overview of Cases*

*With effect 1000 17 April 2020
**Metro North has two recorded deaths
*** These numbers reflect the cases being managed by Metro North